Overview of Assessment & Selection
EPISODE 2
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Welcome another SWEET episode of the Ones Ready Podcast! On this one, we are gonna get right into the meat and potatoes of why we are here! Assessment and selection.
A&s- What is it?
First let’s cover some of the history of where we came from and what selection is now. There are people who are still emailing us or messaging us and asking if Indoc is gone and what it's like now. So yes, Indoc is gone and it has changed over to A&S or Assessment and Selection. There's a pretty big fundamental difference between Selection and the Indoctrination course. The indoctrination course was a course that you had to go through (for Pararescue) and once you made it through the final evaluations, then you graduated the course. Basically the indoctrination course was if you survived and you were able to meet the standards, then you would graduate the course. There was a lot of yelling and mentoring we used to impart on you guys. So it was more mentorship driven... it was a course.
Assessment and Selection is exactly what it sounds like. They shortened the length from the original 8 weeks of Indoc. Now it’s currently four weeks, but that is subject to change too… some classes are shorter than that. Before you go into Selection, you have eight weeks of the Special Warfare Prep course, which is a course tuned to make you physically and somewhat mentally ready to go into selection. One of the key differences between the old school way of doing it and the new is that this is an actual selection. Even if you survive the duration of the course, you pass all of the tests, and you haven't quit after four weeks of selection, then you still might not be selected because of your personality attributes or your mental attributes. It could be that you didn’t pay enough attention to detail, you weren’t a team player, or couldn’t think on your feet kind of thing. So that's what the selection portion of it means. And the assessment means that you have instructors that are not as much yelling at you as they are kind of writing down and keeping tabs on however you're reacting to these things, literally assessing you. They have data points that they can debrief and go over when it comes time to bring you up to the big table and tell you whether or not you've been selected onto the team.
3 phases of a&s
There are three basic phases to the A&S right now. The first phase is the trainability phase. This means, if I (as the cadre) give you instructions, can you execute? This is during the portion of the course of what you're going to get a little bit of feedback from the instructors. But it's not going to be like the yelling and screaming like we had in the past. The second phase is going to be your durability phase where physical events are a little more heinous. When you start to lack food and sleep, we're going to see how you react to that and if your body and your mind can put up with it. The last phase is your suitability. We're not just taking the worthy instructors anymore and running it through our matrix, we are also asking your teammates what they think about you because that's incredibly important when it comes to being on a team. Your peer evals, what people think about you... are you the same person in every location and every situation? We use all these tools, all these physical tools to peel back the layers and see who you really are and see if you're a good fit for the team. We have heard candidates say there is no physical standard. That doesn't mean it's not incredibly physically difficult. We're just using the physical to see who you are, to peel back the layers. Cause at a certain point you're going to show us who you are. Character is almost more important than competence when we're talking about special operations, career fields. And the way that you evaluate that is you include things like peer review, you include things like psychological evaluations. It's not just let's punch everybody in the face every single day.
What the instructors are looking for
TRENT- They want to see a good person, with a positive mental attitude. Someone that makes their teammates better. The numbers are what they are and what candidates don't often see is sometimes we would have the guys in the past where it's like… Hey, you've got to do 10 pull ups. They do nine, but they're a fantastic candidate. We're not heartless. We want to see if there’s any way we can get this, this person to the pipeline. We all want you to guys to succeed. We want to put forth our best effort and as former instructors who would spend 12+ hour days helping people in their weak areas, are so invested in the people that are coming through.
BRIAN- One of the things that we really want to see is guys that are coachable & trainable. If we sit there and we spend time on you, I'm trying to teach you how to do the stroke, we don't want to waste our time. If I spend however much time with them teaching someone how to do their mask correctly, teaching them how to get their snorkel in their mouth, seal it, look straight up. And then when it comes time to perform, I see you not doing what we worked on. Then helping you doesn’t become a priority because you don’t implement what you have been trained on. I would rather spend my time with any of the 80 other people that will put for the effort to implement what I teach them. We also like to see is teamwork on all the teams. For example, you always take care of the team, team gear first, and then take care of whatever your personal stuff is. And those guys that I used to see helping each other out or looking around when things got tough and making sure their team was okay when things got tough rather than worrying about themselves are the guys that I, I saw succeed a lot more and their peer reviews reflected their team ethic. Stoicism also is one of those, one of the things attributes we look for. Humor is ok every once in a while, but when you get thrashed down squeal like a little girl… Just don't squeal or make any annoying noises because that can set off the instructors.
AARON- One of the things that I focused on and it's more of a preparation question than anything else. People always asked when I was at the apprentice course, what can I study, what should I be studying before I go to the course? And my answer was a little nonstandard and it was always, I would prefer that you come in as a blank slate. Our job as instructors is to teach you and get you through the event. Part of that is I want to see you take in new information and then I want to see that you can apply it. You're not always going to be able to study for every combat situation. You're not going to be able to study for every real world situation. You're not going to be able to look ahead and be like, okay, I'm going to practice this. Some things of course, but that's part of the evaluation process is we want to get people that can take in new information and then immediately apply it.
PEACHES- Man I looked for the dudes that were hungry. They would get the team and they just couldn't get enough. They were just “give me more, give me more”. And if I did task them appropriately or give them enough work and they finished it, they would ask “what else needed to be done?”. They also look around to see how they can help other dudes. If they weren’t tasked with anything directing, they’d grab a radio and practice programming it or learning new features, or hitting the books to learn new tactics. They're just hungry and I can't give them enough at some point. So those are the guys that I'm looking for and that has been my experience.
WHAT INSTRUCTORS ARE NOT LOOKING FOR
There are things that make instructors mad. Every instructor, every team Sergeant has their own pet peeves.
AARON- The biggest one for me that I had to put out there and talk about first is that Spotlight Ranger. So what is a Spotlight Ranger? It's that guy that is running a nine minute mile pace during a timed event. Running a nine minute mile the entire time he's running with his team. Then, he gets within 200 meters of that instructor and all of a sudden he's Captain America, running a seven minute mile, chest out, proud, singing the loudest. It drives me absolutely insane. The spotlight ranger doing things for recognition only when an instructor is around. Another peeve of mine is, it used to frustrate me to no end when people would try to give me the answer that they thought I wanted to hear as opposed to just answering the question. So it's like I would look at guys and I'd be like, Hey, what time is it right now? And they'd be like, all right, well listen. Growing up as an underprivileged kid in the middle of Illinois, I never knew what I wanted to do with my life. And then one day after it was lunchtime and I decided to be a PJ. I'm like, man, I just answered, answer the question. Just tell me what I want to hear. Quit. Quit doing this. Uh, I'm gonna, I'm going to bring it over to the old Silva back gorilla here because I'm sure there are a lot of people in the career field or right now that have some, uh, some strong feelings about you as a, as a cadre of what did you, what did you hate to see out of candidates?
BRIAN-I have a couple pet peeves and a lot of these guys that are listening to this podcast are going to get a little bit of a trigger for some of them. The biggest one I already mentioned, guys squealing and making noises. So I would yell a lot, like stop making noises, just put in the freaking work and get the job done. That was a huge pet peeve of mine. And then also whenever guys, were doing Memorial pushups, and towards the end we always do our our last three: teamwork, fallen comrades and Pararescue. Those last three, especially with the fallen comrades, sometimes cones will just spout out whatever and get the name wrong or get the rank wrong. Then they do some half-assed pushups and you know, expect us to just move on. So I would literally make them do those three or the entire set over again until they did those last three correctly and somehow magically, even though they thought they were smoked, on the first set, they would finish the last set better than they did the first set.
The last one that I'm just going to bring up is whenever we tell the dudes to get their uniforms on, and I show up into the pool as the deck instructor, and these guys are like slumped over looking down at the water. They're just scared and you can feel the tension in the room. Their legs are shaking, looking around at each other. Like, is he staring at me? Oh no. I always tell them chest out, head up. Be confident in what's going to happen because no matter what, you're going to have to freaking do it, right. I mean, you don't have any other options, just go down there, frigging knock it out. Projecting some of that confidence goes a long way.
TRENT-First thing I would say is candidates that know me will remember this… I hate when candidates cheer mediocrity. When you have that candidate that consistently just is not making it and all the all the rest of his teammates… and I get it they're all bros, they went through BMT and everything else, and this person is coming in last on every event… and everybody's clapping and cheering for this dude. You understand that you're encouraging what we're not looking for? I also can't stand people that show up, especially these days, that don't know anything about the career fields. Like I get not knowing a lot, but all you have to do is put in a quick google search. If I ask them, who's your favorite combat controller? And they're like, I dunno, I made this huge life decision and didn't go onto the internet, which holds all of the world's information. So I'm a huge proponent of, of people doing research before they get there, whether it be physical or just knowing anything about what they signed up for.
PEACHES- So for me on the team, it's when there's work that has to be done and everybody else is working and you have a dude that is, “Hey man, I gotta go and do something else”. I'm not talking about divide and conquer tasks. I'm talking about a dude who legitimately doesn’t want to do the task or they just find a way to scurry on out under the radar. That bugs the hell out of me. And at that point, once I recognize it… you're marked now you may get a second shot. Maybe not. If you have some personal issues like family issues, I understand and we can work through it. For me, this is not for everybody, but it is most of the SOF community… family dudes, you got to take care of your family. And guess what? The bros on the team are also your family.
PERSONAL SELECTION STORIES
Be sure to tune into the podcast to hear the hosts discuss their personal selection stories, including what helped them get through selection in the first place. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of the Ones Ready Podcast where we help mentor USAF Special Candidates to become better Operators than we ever were. Use our stories, our experiences, and our knowledge to crush selection and the pipeline.
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